No need to tell them what was going on. And if they had wanted that door shut yet, they would have shut it.
They acknowledged his presence with nods of the head, that was all, eyes fixed on their equipment, and he slipped into the nearer vacant chair and watched the monitor. He didn’t see anything but shrubbery and a small tree. The view changed to the front door. The garden, and the damaged arbor.
“Have you contact, nadiin-ji, with the aiji’s forces?” he asked.
“Cenedi has,” Tano said, and added, after a moment, “Banichi has now missed a report, Bren-ji. We are not greatly alarmed, but we are obliged to say so.
He didn’t want to hear that. He bit his lip in silence for a moment, and forbore questions. Their eyes never left the equipment, with its readouts and its telltales.
“The roof still reports all quiet, but movement on the perimeter,” Algini said. “We remain wary of diversionary action. Two of Cenedi’s men are interrogating Lord Baiji. And names are named.”
“Report as you find leisure,” Bren murmured, meaning he would not ask for a coherent report, busy as they were. He was in the nerve center of their defenses. Some of those lights represented certain points of their defense. The monitor showed a view of the stone walkway that led down to the harbor and the boat dock.
Movement somewhere, though it didn’t show at the moment.
“Where is the dowager, Bren-ji?” Tano asked.
“The office,” he said, “with Cajeiri. Staff hall doors, garden doors, front doors, all shut and secured.”
“Tano-ji,” Algini said sharply, calling for attention. Both brows furrowed, and the pair exchanged looks, a shake of the head. Bren sat very still. Didn’t ask. They were busy, both of them, at their specialty, and Cenedi’s men were out and about, including on the roof, including down toward the dock, and some likely in the village. Right now, having been left in charge of his safety as well as their regular duties, they needed no divided attention: needed to know where he was, and that he wasn’t in need of their help. That door to the hall was open, but it, like the other secure doors, was steel-cored, capable of being shut and security-bolted.
What they had in that console, whether it was officially cleared, he had no personal knowledge, didn’t technically understand, and frankly hadn’t asked—deliberately hadn’t asked. Tano and Algini had spent the last couple of years on the space station. While the planet below them had broken out in chaos, they’d spent their time becoming familiar with equipment the paidhi, who was responsible for clearing new tech to be generally deployed on the planet, had never clearedc and under the circumstances of their return from space, he hadn’t asked.
Hypocritical? He had no question it was. But maybe he should have—considering that Captain Jules Ogun, in charge of the space station, had decided to drop relay stations on the planet. Maybe he should have asked what part Tano and Algini had played in that decision, whether they hadadvised Lord Geigi, governing the atevi side of the station, that this communications system was a potential problem.
Mogari-nai, the big dish, had been their sole contact when they’d left for deep space: now, with the proliferation of satellites—God knew what was going to be loose in the world.
Things that threatened the operation of the Asassins’ Guild, which hadn’t had to worry about locators. Or cell phones. There was a time they hadn’t had night-vision, or a hundred other items he suspected his own security staff and Geigi’s now had—and he hoped no one else did.
But hehad been out in space for two years, leaving the job of determining what technology ought to go to the planet largely to Yolanda Mercheson, essentially an emissary of Captain Jules Ogun. More, once the coup had happened, she’d interfaced—not even between Mospheira and the atevi—but mostly between the humans of her own ship and Lord Geigi, whose eagerness to snatch whatever tech he could lay hands on was only surpassed by that of Tabini-aiji himself.
The paidhi had notbeen doing his job for two critical years. The paidhi had come back to find the world girded by satellites, a grid laid out, and relay stations—armed and mobile relay stations—dropped into strategic areas, satellite phones, cell towers on the Island, and all the preparation to loose, even worse, either cell phones or far less restricted wireless on the continent. The Assassins’ Guild was the worst, the very worst affected. Keeping the aishidi’tat, the Western Association, together—meant keeping each member of the Association sure that his advantage was exactly the same as everybody else’s; or at least sure that if somebody else cheated and got an advantage, the aiji in Shejidan was going to come down on them fast and hard. Guild members didn’t talk about Guild business, but the Assassins’ Guild itself had had one internal power struggle, only last year.
The aiji’s side had won, but what was going on tonight out in the bushes around the estate contested that conclusion.
He’d been coasting along since his return trying to catch up on what had happened, what technology had come in, what atevi had invented themselves, or modified. He’d been writing letters, answering queries, trying to find out what was a fait accompli and what he could still get a grip on, and possibly stop—
He’d beencoastingc in the technology questions since his returnc and now he had a growing, sinking feeling that he might utterly have lost the war.
They had aliens out there that were promising to come calling, atevi wanted their share of the situationc and that meant technological advance.
They had one hell of a problem in the world, was what they had. Hehad a problem. The Guild certainly had—and wouldn’t be happy about it. The aishidi’tat had a problem—manifested in a coup, a counter-coup, and God help them if things went wrong tonight—possibly a civil warc in which the technology he’d delayed banning was likely to turn up, full-blown, possibly inciting certain factions, possibly giving advantage where it hadn’t been and meaning all bets were off on the outcome.
It was the paidhi’s fault—at least in the sense he hadn’t been able to prevent it.
And Cajeiri was going to have it all in his lap, if he survived his childhood.
The dowager was right. Time they did get the boy full-time, technologically sophisticated security to keep him alive, considering the world he’d been born into, and not Great-uncle’s socially impeccable but less than adaptable old men. They needed two very young Guild, somebody who’d keep aheadof the boy, and train the two Taibeni practically in situ. Thank God, he thought, the Taibeni youngsters had come in with some natural advantages of their upbringing. But it wasn’t enough.
Something had to change. Soon. It wasn’t a safe world. And the boy’s tendency to go off on his own wasn’t going to get handled if Tabini, Uncle Tatiseigi, and the dowager started quarreling about the ethnicity of the guard.
God. His brain was wandering. The upcoming cell phone speech seemed suddenly so little, so small an issue. He was trying to stop a flood with a teacup. It couldn’t be another regulation. It had to be an attitudinal accommodation in the society. They’d accommodated tech on ship. Why couldn’t they adjust—?
They’d handled phones. They’d handled trains crossing provincial and associational boundaries. They’d adjusted. They’d taken computers, and done things theirway, that the paidhi couldn’t even have conceived of. That had been a dicey step. And they’d survived it.
If he could just explain to them—
Somethinghappened. Tano gave that sign that meant trouble, and then said the code word for intruder, getting up from his chair and reaching for his pistol as he did so.
Bren got up out of the way immediately and reached for his own gun, while Algini kept his attention fixed on the equipment.